That price is for both. Originally the clueless seller had an auction with a starting bid of 49.99. At some point, (no doubt after an exchange of emails), she started a separate listing and offered the pair for buy it now at 100. She easily could have sold one racket for twice that, let alone the pair. She volunteered to be completely taken advantage of as she is not a tennis person and had no idea what she was selling. Sort of like someone who sells a priceless work of art for a pittance because they did not bother to research the piece's true worth. Essentially, she gifted the buyer at least 300 dollars, maybe more.

I hope the rackets went to someone who will actually play them and not one of the notorious flippers. :roll:

This woman had no idea what she was doing. More likely a 4 3/8 and she misread it or the grips had been built up. The seller was completely clueless so the grips sizes would be an unknown until delivery. On the auction site, a lot of sellers can't seem to get the grip size right for some reason.

So.......again, what's so wrong with flipping rackets?
I basiccally live on flipping rackets. So what if someone does not know the value of items for sale. She was probably happy with the $100.00 she received. The buyer is happy too, and maybe he only wants to play with them.
If a guy comes on TV that he found a hidden Picasso on a fleamarket for a 100.00 bucks, everyone is cheering because he made a fortune. They even have TV shows just for these kind of events. Lighten up, you guys are just jealous you did'nt saw the bargain first......!!

I think there is something wrong with knowingly taking advantage of someone's ignorance. The seller would probably not be too happy if she knew that someone knowingly screwed her out of $300 to $400.

It is one thing to find a gem at Goodwill and sell it downstream for a profit. Fine. It is another to consciously go through the process of screwing someone, female or otherwise, out of money. Whoever bought these rackets contacted the seller and talked her out of letting the auction finish and offered her a rather low price, at best 25% of what the rackets are worth and they knew they were doing it. All the while pretending to be doing her a favor no doubt. Sort of slimy IMHO. I assume she could use the money or she would not be selling miscellaneous items on the auction site. This is not much different than lifting someone''s wallet IMHO. Kind of like the scumbag brothers who bought a 5 million dollar lottery ticket from one of their convenience store customers for 5,000 "to save him the hassle of taxes." They lied to him about the ticket's worth and they are going to jail as a result. Not so different than what happened here except in terms of scale.

The seller, on the other hand, is an idiot and idiots will be taken advantage of frequently. You can't fix stupid. Ultimately, it is her fault for not knowing the value of what she was selling.

Yikes! Don't anybody tell FF that I'm going to sell my contractor table saw for 1/3 its value if I find a buyer who actually NEEDS a quality saw and can't afford it. Same for my Cannondale Bad Boy Ultra that I'll let go for a couple hundred bucks instead of the $500-600 it should fetch(again, IF I can find a 'needy' buyer).

One person looked for a good deal, another gave a good deal. One person asked for a good deal, another agreed to give a good deal. Take it easy.. happens all the time not just with racquets but other stuff too.:wink:

One person looked for a good deal, another gave a good deal. One person asked for a good deal, another agreed to give a good deal. Take it easy.. happens all the time not just with racquets but other stuff too.:wink:

Click to expand...

+1 Amen to that, brother.

Is it not reasonable that the seller, unlike most of us who trawl this sub-forum, simply didn't care about the intrinsic or relative worth of the rackets? Heck, on my thrift shop binges I often pick up items of negligible worth or interest to me that I am willing to offload online cheap to hipsters on those arty sites like Etsy or whatever. I could care less about fetching a Sotheby's record price for a tatty print that may or may not be a Picasso that I found next to those three gleaming PS85 SV's in 9/10 condition.

By FF's reckoning I am a fool and deserving of the same scorn and vitriol as that reserved for his beloved scammers. At the end of the day, I am unwilling to invest any great emotional energy in realising the highest possible return on a trinket I have no concern for. I would rather devote my energies to maximising the return on the things I am more certain about. Thrift shopping and flipping exists in a Karmic Universe; it's swings and roundabouts. You win some, you lose some. Do good, you get rewarded down the track somehow, like when I donated some gear and found a Hi-Ten 30 and 50 the next day.

Embittered and vengeful misanthropy is a stench that sometimes pervades this forum.

I came across a Lacoste Equijet LT 301 in mint condition with cover and the rubber dampener still attached.
The asking price was U$20.00. This was on the Dutch version of Craig's list.
I emailed and offered her U$35.00 for it. She was more than happy to sell it to me because it was littering her garage.
So yes, I got a fantastic deal on it and the lady was happy too.
No hard feelings or regret that I "failed" to mention it's true value, why not...? Because she decided to value it to her liking and I went over it.

FF: You can't fix stupid. Ultimately, it is her fault for not knowing the value of what she was selling."

Maybe there are individuals that just don't care about value and making money.
That has nothing to do with being stupid. Besides, who says this "guy" offered about 25% less than the listing price? Maybe he offered her 25% more to make sure the lady would end the auction and cash in more than she expected.
Guy happy, lady happy...!!

To illustrate my point, let's say your mother is a naive, trusting old woman (and you are in a coma so there is no one to advise her.)

And let's say your late father collected vintage cars and had a rare, mint, old car that was worth a small fortune. Your mother has no idea of the car's true worth, to her it is simply an old car. She puts an ad in the paper selling the car for $500 (a fraction of its market value) to help pay your mounting hospital bills. Some flipper guy jumps on it, offers her $400 which she accepts, never mentions to grandma that the car is worth many multiples of what she is asking and eventually sells the car to a collector for $500K. While legal, this process isn't exactly going to win flipper the Citizen of the Year Award.

I think someone took advantage of the seller especially the way this deal evolved. The buyer, who undoubtedly knew what the rackets were worth, could have at least offered her a fair price somewhere in the neighborhood of what the rackets market worth since it was quite obvious she was completely clueless. (If someone else concludes otherwise, so be it. We agree to disagree.) And again, the seller, probably an older woman who sells some things on the auction site to help her scrape by, is at fault for not having any idea of the value of what she was selling. She unwittingly gifted the flipper $300 to $400, maybe somewhat more. I am all for capitalism. However, I have a conscience, too. Some people don't have that problem. A fair deal is just that not taking advantage of some clueless woman's ignorance. Merry Christmas.

Yes, putting it that way you have a point, however, you are full of assumptions...!! First you assume that the guy talked this lady into selling even cheaper than the advertised price and you also assume that this is an ignorant, clueless and stupid woman.
Well, stupid women do not have a 100% feedback rate and 692 succesfull sales. She may well be a smart lady that paid U$10.00 for both at the church's fair and was more than happy to take the 1000% profit.

Without knowing the full story, it's not really possible to make a complete "ethics judgment," is it? She may have gotten the pair from a thrift store for $5.00 each, then felt (as a non-nerd racquet collector) totally ecstatic to get $100 for the pair. ???

Without knowing the full story, it's not really possible to make a complete "ethics judgment," is it? She may have gotten the pair from a thrift store for $5.00 each, then felt (as a non-nerd racquet collector) totally ecstatic to get $100 for the pair. ???

I think there is something wrong with knowingly taking advantage of someone's ignorance. The seller would probably not be too happy if she knew that someone knowingly screwed her out of $300 to $400.

It is one thing to find a gem at Goodwill and sell it downstream for a profit. Fine. It is another to consciously go through the process of screwing someone, female or otherwise, out of money. Whoever bought these rackets contacted the seller and talked her out of letting the auction finish and offered her a rather low price, at best 25% of what the rackets are worth and they knew they were doing it. All the while pretending to be doing her a favor no doubt. Sort of slimy IMHO. I assume she could use the money or she would not be selling miscellaneous items on the auction site. This is not much different than lifting someone''s wallet IMHO. Kind of like the scumbag brothers who bought a 5 million dollar lottery ticket from one of their convenience store customers for 5,000 "to save him the hassle of taxes." They lied to him about the ticket's worth and they are going to jail as a result. Not so different than what happened here except in terms of scale.

The seller, on the other hand, is an idiot and idiots will be taken advantage of frequently. You can't fix stupid. Ultimately, it is her fault for not knowing the value of what she was selling.

Click to expand...

That is one perspective. Here is another-

The seller has been on e-bay for 8 1/2 years. With a feedback score of 698 they have likely been involved in 1000+ transactions. It's not their first rodeo as they say. They also may have picked up the racquets for $5 at their local Goodwill.

I might agree with you had this been a nice old lady selling them at her church yardsale. There is no such thing as taking advantage of someone who makes a living on e-bay.

I think there is something wrong with knowingly taking advantage of someone's ignorance. The seller would probably not be too happy if she knew that someone knowingly screwed her out of $300 to $400.

It is one thing to find a gem at Goodwill and sell it downstream for a profit. Fine. It is another to consciously go through the process of screwing someone, female or otherwise, out of money. Whoever bought these rackets contacted the seller and talked her out of letting the auction finish and offered her a rather low price, at best 25% of what the rackets are worth and they knew they were doing it. All the while pretending to be doing her a favor no doubt. Sort of slimy IMHO. I assume she could use the money or she would not be selling miscellaneous items on the auction site. This is not much different than lifting someone''s wallet IMHO. Kind of like the scumbag brothers who bought a 5 million dollar lottery ticket from one of their convenience store customers for 5,000 "to save him the hassle of taxes." They lied to him about the ticket's worth and they are going to jail as a result. Not so different than what happened here except in terms of scale.

The seller, on the other hand, is an idiot and idiots will be taken advantage of frequently. You can't fix stupid. Ultimately, it is her fault for not knowing the value of what she was selling.

I think there is something wrong with knowingly taking advantage of someone's ignorance. The seller would probably not be too happy if she knew that someone knowingly screwed her out of $300 to $400.

It is one thing to find a gem at Goodwill and sell it downstream for a profit. Fine. It is another to consciously go through the process of screwing someone, female or otherwise, out of money. Whoever bought these rackets contacted the seller and talked her out of letting the auction finish and offered her a rather low price, at best 25% of what the rackets are worth and they knew they were doing it. All the while pretending to be doing her a favor no doubt. Sort of slimy IMHO. I assume she could use the money or she would not be selling miscellaneous items on the auction site. This is not much different than lifting someone''s wallet IMHO. Kind of like the scumbag brothers who bought a 5 million dollar lottery ticket from one of their convenience store customers for 5,000 "to save him the hassle of taxes." They lied to him about the ticket's worth and they are going to jail as a result. Not so different than what happened here except in terms of scale.

The seller, on the other hand, is an idiot and idiots will be taken advantage of frequently. You can't fix stupid. Ultimately, it is her fault for not knowing the value of what she was selling.

Click to expand...

so basically......you were trying to bid but someone beat you to the punch behind your back, and you lost out. that sucks

I think we are forgetting the whole reason people flock to f l e a b a y in the first place? :???:

High volume sellers don't have the time or more so the patience to research every little thing they come across especially with how obscure some of these items can be. They're not going to bother looking for that buyer paying top dollar either. Rather than ignorance, I think it is safe to say in her position it is about moving out inventory as quick as possible. When these types of sellers list, they are fully willing to make big bucks by pricing things authoritatively on what they know or risking the "true" value of like items (such as this) by learning their worth from selling them time and time again.

Let's just say with that transaction she got a little closer to learning about the value of older sticks.

Also, I don't see how it is any different than if this was the other half of the story:

Without knowing the full story, it's not really possible to make a complete "ethics judgment," is it? She may have gotten the pair from a thrift store for $5.00 each, then felt (as a non-nerd racquet collector) totally ecstatic to get $100 for the pair. ???